Venom Circuit
by Kyrotec
Summary: When Beast Boy's download causes a fatal error in the computer system that controls Titans tower, the team must recruit an old friend to help. Centered around my favorite character of all time, and a little bit around BB.
1. Chapter 1

Raven was in the game room, crouched on the sofa, peering into the pages of the book she had just opened-- when the lights went out. Starfire was in her bedroom, trying to apply the lipstick she had just bought as part of her first set of "earth cosmetology tools," when the lights went out. Cyborg was under the T-car when the lights went out.

Robin leaned over his desk, idly turning over the reticle magnifier he held in his hand. Breathing sparsely, he inched in towards the picture that he had been studying for the past hour and set the magnifier down on top of the mysterious figure in the background. He gave the maginfier's scale a small flick to the right, and peered into the lens. The facial features of that man in the brimmed hat had just started to take shape, and Robin was beginning to think he might have seen him somewhere before

...when the lights went out, and the entire room fell into darkness.

Robin looked up, waiting for his eyes to adjust to what little light there was. At first he was mildly concerned when he noticed that not even the emergency backup baselights had come on since the power had gone out. A few possible explanations came to mind, not the least of which was that an enemy attack he had somehow been unaware of had taken out their generator. With this in mind, he both relaxed and tensed again when he heard Cyborg's anguished cry from down the hall...

"AWW MAN! WHAT DID YOU DO?!!"

Robin took a deep breath and eased himself away slightly from the desk. He reached into his utility belt where he kept a small LED flashlight for just such emergencies- though from the sounds of Cyborg's shouting and the weak and muffled retort that seemed to be Beast Boy, he couldn't say for sure that he thought this warranted an "emergency."

He made his way out into the hall and towards the commons area, where at the moment- most of the noise seemed to be coming from. When he arrived he found Cyborg pacing around in agitated circles, engaging in a veritable verbal sparring match with Beast Boy while the girls watched from the side. Raven, who was wearing a bored, irritated expression as she leaned against the far wall, briefly made eye contact with him as he approached. Starfire floated anxiously around the action, seemingly unsure of whether or not to intervene.

"You've gone too far this time!" exclaimed Cyborg. "The grid is FRIED, man! What if my battery runs out before I get done repairing this place?"

"Dude! The download was legit! All I did the click the button! How was I gonna know it would go all 'wonky' on me?"

"Beast Boy," Raven chimed in, cooly. "People create sites that look like the legitimate ones for the purpose of luring you into a false sense of security. You probably downloaded a malware."

"Whose side are you ON?" Beast Boy cried out desperately. He was then forced to return his eyes to the large, angry titan.

"You know what? It doesn't matter because Beast Boy isn't allowed on the computer anymore!"

"WHAT?!! How is THAT FAIR?!! Dude, read my lips! I DIDN'T KNOW it would mess up!"

Robin chose this moment to intercede, "Cyborg? What's going on?"

There was a noticable and shocked pause. Cyborg's hand slid to the back of his neck and Beast Boy took the oppotunity to back several steps away while the mechanical titan was distracted. Cyborg stuttered, "Well, uh... Beast Boy... "

"It was a total accident," Beast Boy interjected.

Cyborg looked perterbed, "_Green bean_ over here decided it would be a good idea to try and download a new game onto the computer." He ignored Beastboy's disgruntled moan and continued, "what he got was some new virus - took out the whole hard drive- all our base systems are down and it's going to take me at least four hours just to bring the power grid back up to speed."

Beast Boy never really could master a "death glare," but the look he was giving Cyborg was close enough. Robin stroked his chin and answered this calmly, "Once you have the power grid up, how fast can you restore the other systems?"

"I don't know," murmured Cyborg, "depends how much damage was done to the tower's programs. Could be at least as long as the grid itself."

Robin sighed, "I see. Is there any way to speed up the process?"

Cyborg paused and stared into space, wracking his brain for a moment. "Yeah," he finally replied. "But I'd have to bring in help."

Robin nodded, "Then do it. We need to have the tower systems back online before there's an emergency."

At this, Raven tilted her head towards the kitchen, where Starfire had wandered off to, and presently toggled the handles of the sink faucet to find that no water came out. "Or before one of us has to use the bathroom," she remarked shrewdly.

An hour later all but the mechanical titan were planted in various spots around the room, doing what could only be called, "hanging-out-in-the-dark." In order to preserve the communicator's battery, Robin had purposefully avoided checking up on Cyborg, so they had no idea when he would be coming back.

Beast Boy was by far the most agitated of the four, and had given up trying to make conversation with Raven or Starfire and had gone to rooting around in the kitchen, rifling through the drawers, looking "for who-knows-what," if you were to ask Raven.

Since the security systems were no longer operational, to compensate, Robin's senses were on high; his ears straining to hear the smallest noise at the farthest reaches of the giant metal structure. It had been mostly quiet, but as he paused to check the atmosphere once more, he caught the sounds of a set of footsteps and some muffled conversation drifting their way from the main hall. He rose to his feet, startling his teammates with the sudden movement, but they must have heard it too, because they all turned to face the door at the exact same moment...

There was a strange blipping sound and the mechanical doors opened automatically for the first time since the accident had taken its toll on them. Knowing that the tower would be virtually useless in preventing an attack, Raven, Starfire, Robin and Beast Boy braced themselves- teeth bared, eyes glowing and starbolts charged- for what, in the worst possible circumstances, might lay on the other side.

A shadowy figure emerged from the doorway, "Peace, _friends_." The voice was soothing and calm. The figure moved slowly into the light, allowing what little illumination was in the room to grace his angular features. A small smile played on the former man's lips, and he seemed to pronounce the latter word with great care and endearment.

Starfire was the first to abandon her defenses, "FIXIT!" She cried, and flung herself around him in one of her signature Starfire hugs. Raven and Beast Boy dropped their guard, too, leaving just Robin poised with his bo-staff. He waited a few moments to make sure the coast was clear before returning the weapon to its holster.

"That's right, y'all!" Cyborg called from the hallway. He stepped into the light, behind Fixit. "Got some backup!" He looked to Fixit for confirmation, "We should be able to have this place up and running by midnight!"

Robin tapped his foot nervously. As if he could sense his thoughts, Fixit added, "Of course, most of the... essential systems will be up and operational long before that."

Only a few mintues later, the power had been restored. A few minutes after that, the water systems and security feeds had come back. Fixit was working at full tilt, along with Cyborg, to get everything up and running as fast as they needed it. Finally, a mere two hours since their arrival, the main computer was back online, and Fixit was pouring over it's contents, arched over the keyboard while scanning a perplexing block of code that filled the entire screen.

"Hmm... Quickerz Audio Books, BetaRoots Soundcard driver..." he seemed almost to be communing with the machine itself- since noone else in the room, except perhaps Cyborg, was capable of discerning the meaning that the strings of 0's, 1's, and various backslashed directories could have held. Fixit's face remained stoic and unnmoving, his brow only furrowing slightly as he murmured, "This is very curious."

Robin sprang to life, "What is?" He asked, apparently fearing some kind of attack.

"It is not... too alarming, but I cannot locate the file that you said was responsible for this. The one Beast Boy downloaded? What was it called, again?"

Robin shot an intimidating glare at Beast Boy, thus encouraging his participation in the problem-solving. "Uh..." Beast Boy stammered in response, "It was called Solarex-9."

While Robin's breifly disgusted glance faded into an indifferent one, Fixit leaned in and began typing furiously on the keypad. "Hmm..." he said softly, most probably speaking to himself. "? No such filename. I will try another extension," then, some minutes later when this did not work, he backed away from the computer and sighed, "This is troubling. I would benefit so much more from being able to study the original malfunction. I will leave the mainframe alone for now." With that, he switched off the power supply to the main computer and the screen faded out to reveal the night sky behind it.

"What should we do?" Quiried Robin, ambling to his feet from the couch where he had been sitting.

"Rest," replied Fixit calmly, without heasitation.

"Are you sure?" Cyborg interjected.

"Yes. All of you should go to sleep. When you awaken I will have completed the repairs and made upgrades to your tower. Everything will be restored," he answered with a kind of brazen, monotone confidence.

The five heasitated, but Fixit looked to them expectantly, seeming to be confused as to why they did not simply accept his offer and leave, but one by one and with last words of parting, they slowly filed out of the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two - The Emerald City

Beast Boy awoke to the blinding light of the sunbeams coming in from his window; they danced around on the dull green ceiling like the bangles on a wind chime. He stretched, then rolled in his bed, allowing his spine to pop up and down in various spaces as he bounced across the mattress springs. It was quiet in the tower, he noticed. He would usually just fall back asleep if he had heard and recognized the noises of his teammates outside in the hall, but the silence intrigued him. He slid out of the top bunk and wandered around his room.

As he did so, he noticed something very peculiar outside his window- it explained why he had been awaken by the especially bright sunlight. A large metal structure had appeared along the side of the tower, just below his window, and its shiny surface was bouncing the light in.

"Duude..." he whispered to himself.

He checked around his room to see what else was new- nothing that he could see. That was fine by him, but he was curious to see the rest of the tower. He bolted through his sliding doors- failing to notice at first that they opened automatically. After discovering this, He went back through them a few times, just to make sure. As he finished inspecting the doorway, he was alerted to the prescence of three glowing red orbs, floating in the dark at the end of the hall. As they moved towards him, Beast Boy braced for an attack, selecting in the back of his the top five most vicious animals he would turn into in order to vanquish whatever it turned out to be. As the things floated into the light, Beast Boy recognized them as tiny, hovering versions of the droids they had encountered in Fixit's hideout before.

"Oh..." he breathed, "'Sup dudes?" The droids, which were carrying a length of cable between them, passed him by without any kind of acknowledgement. Beast Boy frowned at this, having expected at least some R2-D2-esque string of beeps as a reply, but quickly decided that it would be more interesting to see where they were going. He turned on his heels and trotted after them, like a curious toddler following a butterfly, until they had reached the main hall and entered the common room. Beast Boy froze.

It was like he had entered another world. There was tech in places that there had never been tech before. Hidden panels in the wall and in the furntiture folded and unfolded like pieces in a pop-up book, boasting an unimaginable array of elaborate circuitry and new command buttons that did things Beast Boy was sure were fantastic. He could not wait to press all of it, try all of it, sit on and play with every modified surface. It was like a giant electronic candyland, glittering with LED lights- a new playground for the teen hero.

"Whoo Yaall! Look at THIS!" It was Cyborg's voice behind him. "Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!" He and the others had apparently just appeared in the doorway, courtesy of Raven's powers, and were each in their own way silently gawking at the scene that lay before them. Cyborg stepped around them all and, nearly drooling, inspected the scene. "Aww Yeah! I told y'all THIS is how we should be living! Look! Automatic seat adjusters! Upgraded stereo system! Interactive wall-mounted climate controls!" He ran to the sink and excitedly toggled a small switch on the wall behind it. At this, he teared up, "and look! We even have a DISPOSAL!"

As the shockingly loud sink motor stirred to life, a soft, airy voice drifted in from behind them.

"I am glad you approve, Cyborg. As for the rest of you, I am eager to recieve your feedback. What do you think of the upgrades?"

Beast Boy looked back at the hermit, puzzled. The tone of his voice was happy, enthusiastic- but his face broadcasted a deep level of concern. This was not comforting to the green boy, who generally prefered to have at least some idea how people the people he talked to were feeling. He hadn't been entirely cogniscent of it before, but realized now that their guest's facial expressions were mostly unreadable- and this bothered him.

Robin answered the question, seemingly for the whole group, "It's great!" he proclaimed. He was about to say something else, but Fixit cut him off.

"You are sure? Have you seen ALL of the tower?" Fixit answered this gravely, his tone finally matching the look of worry on his face.

"Uh, no... is something wrong?" Robin braved. Beast Boy noticed the other three seemed unsure of where to go with this.

Fixit's brow furrowed- slightly. "No, nothing should be 'wrong' with the systems. They might be imperfect to your tastes, however. Would you like a tour?"

"Uh, sure..." Robin answered, again seeming to speak for the whole group.

This time Fixit smiled- it was a small smile, but a noticable one. "I am confident you will find most of the upgrades to be to your liking, but I wish to inform you of each of their functions in case some adjustments need be made."

"Okay," Robin sighed, then gestured to the others to follow. They filed in line behind Fixit and exited the common room-- Cyborg giving one last, affectionate flick to the garbage disposal switch before going.

Twenty-two minutes later felt like an hour to Beastboy, who didn't much care to hear about the new ventilation system or the extra security features. He'd wanted to stop and play in the mostly-improved new game room, but had been instantly yanked away from it, to be lectured by Raven, and forced to rejoin the group for the sake of being "polite."

At the time he'd complained that the tour was "boring," to which Raven replied, "I don't much care for it either- but he's done a lot for us and you're going to be nice."

It was easy to see how she could have said that- for it was the level of detail and attention Fixit seemed to put into everything that made the repairs and upgrades **outstanding** and the tour of the house gloriously **uninteresting...**

"Here I noticed a deficiency in the air flow so I dissected the ventillation system in this area and replaced it with a much better functioning..." Fixit droned on like this at every stop, and Beast Boy zoned out even more each time. This time, he started to fall asleep on his feet, his five-year-old's attention span forcing him into a kind of dreamy trance. As he drifted in and out, he leaned to the side, expecting to catch himself on the wall. Only, the "wall" gave way, and a stunned and startled Beast Boy fell sputtering and wide-eyed, with a hard "thud" onto the carpet.

Freshly awakened, he quickly sat bolt upright, looking around to see the four other Titans and their "guest" staring at him. He had actually failed to realize that the tour had wound around to the hallway in front of his room - and the "wall" he thought he'd been leaning on was actually his bedroom doors- which had opened automatically as he'd gotten close to them, dropping him on the floor like a sack of doughnuts. His teammates looked at him with largely dissaproving stares, while Raven stood over him and quietly whispered "you idiot," before helping him to his feet. He stood and tried to throw an apologetic glance at Fixit, but could not tell whether or not it was recieved. Fixit remained with a blank expression for a moment before something in his person sparked to life and he resumed the tour with just as much vigor as before.

"Oh! That reminds me! I forgot to mention the auto-locks I installed on all of your personal quartering areas." The Titans stared, so Fixit explained, "You see, I observed that each of you has a personalized living space with manual door controls on the inside. Beast Boy looked over at Raven, expecting to see her bristle when she connected the dots and figured out that Fixit had been in each of their rooms. He was right. Fixit continued, "I suspected that most of you would prefer this space to be private, so I replaced the manual controls with an automatic sensor that compares the frequencies of your locator signals and only allows the correct one- belonging to the owner of the room- to pass through the door." Beast Boy was struggling to keep up, he looked to Raven, who was apparently dumbfounded. Fixit concluded, "It's as good as having a key, but not as primitive, and you may adjust the settings to allow others in, but all in all, this should prevent you from having to deal with most... unwanted guests." He glanced back over them and Beast Boy was sure he was looking directly at him and Raven.

Raven was speechless for a moment, but then slowly uttered the words, "Wow... th-thank you." Beast Boy rolled his eyes. "Anything else we should know?" she encouraged, probably to spite BB because she had noticed the eye-roll.

"No, I believe you will have understood the new systems sufficiently by now." He tilted his head slightly, "Do you find anything unsatisfactory?" He seemed to be pleading for constructive criticism, which at the moment he did not recieve. Everyone else was in awe, and the most they could do was to seemingly shake their head "no." Robin was the only one who actually said anything.

"No Fixit, really... everything seems to be working great! In fact, I can't imagine how you did all this..."

He gave a modest bow, "It was quite simple for me, really... the important thing is that it functions properly."

"Yeah, about that..." started Cyborg, "Why are you so bent on that, anyway? Usually your stuff is 'perfect' and you think it's gonna work just fine. What's the deal?"

Fixit heasitated, unsure. Finally he managed, "I'm sorry, but I do not know what **caused** the problem."

Robin stepped forward, "What are you talking about?"

Fixit shook his head. "The file Beast Boy downloaded... is clean. There is nothing wrong with it. I have not been able to determine where the error came from." He lowered his eyes. "I am concerned, because If I do not find it... I believe the meltdown will happen again."


	3. Chapter 3

Everything clicked along smoothly for the next few weeks and the whole tower was running fast.

There had been a few adjustments that the Titan's had needed to make on their own. For instance, Beast Boy knew the first thing Raven had done was to adjust the auto-lock on her bedroom so that she permanently became the only one with clearance to her room. Robin had had to re-sort through all his newspaper clippings and crime briefs that Fixit's drones had attempted to "file" by cramming them into a drawer in the wall of the examination room, and Starfire had to go and retrieve her "suitcase" (which was actually called something else but Beast Boy couldn't remember the name) from the trash- where it had ended up after the creature had reflexively attacked some of the drones as they were cleaning out Starfire's closet, but other than that, they were able to return to a relatively normal, if a bit more "blippy" version of their former lives.

The thing was, having Fixit around was kind of like acquiring a sixth roommate. He had his own habits and rituals that the team had had to become accustomed to- and after staying three days had claimed a part of the basement as a secondary "workspace." This essentially meant it was his bedroom- something Beast Boy didn't mind very much since he didn't like going to the basement anyway, but it was kind of weird to have an allocated "bedroom" for someone who didn't sleep at all. Moreover, Beast Boy wasn't sure how just how long the man had been living underground - but he was starting to gather that it had been a LONG time since he had last been forced to interact with other human beings. Social convention had since been replaced with "logical pragmatics," which meant that they had to take time out to explain things to Fixit that might not have needed explaining to anyone else. For a while he had thought it was acceptable to enter the bathroom when any of them were showering if a repair was needed in the space. When asked to at least respect the **girls' **privacy, Fixit simply replied that he thought he need not yield to the same rules of courtesy since he did not have the same "biological systems." As Beast Boy remembered, Robin had looked like his head was going to explode.

To be fair, he did learn- and learned fast. He usually only needed to be corrected once on a behavior that seemed to them abnormal or disrespectful. Each time it was like defrosting an old memory of his, and once he recalled it, he would quickly adapt the appropriate conventions. He seemed to form a faster connection with Raven, having a similar reclusive nature, and had quickly understood and acknowledged her demands for what he called "stable privatized environments." Maybe that was why Beast Boy was bothered by him- because he could relate to Raven, whom Beast Boy had spent years just trying to get to _laugh_ at him again.

Well maybe that was ONE reason.

The thing was, Beast Boy just didn't like him- he didn't know why. He was a perfectly nice guy, he was just... weird. Weirder than all of them. He couldn't understand what kind of person would want to spend most of their life underground like that, with no food, no TV, to social interaction - just _fixing _things. That was all he did, and now that he was out and around other people- that was still all he wanted to do, _FIX THINGS_. It was probably the last thing on earth he could ever understand. Cyborg, who had been hanging out with Fixit almost exclusively since the hermit moved in was miles ahead of him in that particular department. He followed Fixit around, asking for critiques on the construction of the T-car, taking in any tips or advice Fixit had to offer (even though Beast Boy found them ungodly annoying) trying to involve him in everything- It was like he had a new best friend. Either that, or he was just the "teachers pet," as Robin had jokingly called him.

The five Titans were in the common room, having pizza for lunch. Fixit floated by a few times, mostly migrating back and forth between the main computer keyboard and one of the flat-panel computer displays on the far wall. It took a while before Starfire, the one out of them who noticed it, acknowledged his presence.

"Hello, friend Fixit! We did not know you were up! Do you desire a slice of the pizza?"

"No thank you," Fixit replied calmly. He did not turn around to talk to them, but kept focused on the screens, scanning the many lines of code that flowed across them.

Beast Boy looked over to where Raven had her slice cradled in a paper towel on her plate. She lifted the slimy, cheesy piece of food up to the light and examined it, it oozed an amber liquid from the tip of the slice down on to the towel. In a casual remark to Fixit, Raven responded, "Grease not your thing?"

Fixit shrugged, but still didn't turn around, "I do not require the same nutrition as full organics, and therefore simply desire to pass on it. Thank you, though for your offer, Starfire. It was most considerate." He leaned over farther and began typing even more furiously at the keys, garnering Robin's attention for the first time that morning.

Robin straightened himself in his seat and craned his neck slightly to get a better view of what Fixit was working on, "Have you got any more clues as to what might have caused the malfunction?"

This time Fixit turned around, releasing the keys. "Unfortunately, no," he replied sadly. "I'm sure it must have been something that came in perhaps _through_ the mirror which Beast Boy used to download the file 'Solarex-9,' but I'm afraid I've hit a lot of dead ends in that respect because the file itself is clean."

Robin's brow furrowed and he stood up. "Do you need any help?" He asked, approaching fixit and the computer.

"No thank you," Fixit responded. He immediately returned his attention to the computer as a small notice came up amidst the code program he was running. "I am Fixit. Things come to me broken and they get repaired. I have taken an interest in this problem and I will get it fixed. With my resources devoted to this task it should be solved in a matter of days. It would be far better if you and your team could relieve yourself of this concern and instead devote additional time to training and investigative efforts. I will easily keep all the additional systems running for you."

Robin paused, examining Fixit's countenance with unease, but he must have realized that the hermit meant no harm, or at least that he would have been relatively easy to stop if he was tampering with something he shouldn't have been.

"Well, thank you for all you've done." He finally announced.

Fixit nodded, again not looking away from the screen. "You are very welcome, but really, it was the least I could do."

"How do you mean?" asked Raven.

"You are the city's protection. No one can expect you to protect it without an adequately functioning base of operations."

"I guess you're right," mused Robin. He turned to the team with a quirky grin on his face. "So who's up for sparring practice?"

Beast Boy's muscles groaned at the thought of extra practice. He knew he would probably get paired with Raven and he had noticed she liked to fly around the gym an awful lot. He subconsiously put a hand up to his shoulder muscles. _Probably doesn't tire her out, _he thought. After all, **she** didn't have to flap to stay aloft.

Starfire soared out of her seat and approached her would-be 'boyfriend' with great enthusiasm. "Oh YES! Friend Robin! I would love to attempt the sparring practice! Will you be my partner of the fighting? Or will you attempt to do the fighting of friend Cyborg again?"

An idea occured to Beast Boy and he eyed Cyborg, who was watching Starfire and Robin with a look of amusement. "_Attempt_ _to do the fighting_ is right! You know you barely even got a kick on me last time, boy wonder," he trailed off when he saw Beast Boy rapidly stuffing the remaning pizza slices in his mouth. "What are you doing?"

Beast Boy did not respond until he was sure he had crammed as much pizza in his mouth as he was convinced his cheeks could possibly hold. Through the gaps and the grease, he spit out, "Heyyh Fwyborb! I beb wur wechord!"

Cyborg's face fell. "Oh no, no WAY! You did NOT beat my record! Open your mouth!"

Beast Boy happily obliged, tilting his head back so that everyone could see the stacks and wads of saliva-soaked pizza crust and streched cheese wedged in and around his tongue, molars and gums. Raven recoiled when faced with the display and slowly stopped chewing before slowly putting her food down and glaring vehemently at Cyborg. Cyborg ignored her for the most part, as he leaned out over the table, his eyes quantifying and counting the objects in Beast Boy's mouth with an admirable, competitive prescison.

"Dude you halfway swallowed that one..." he moaned.

"Slill cowns!" Beast Boy protested, not really caring that much about the record because he knew what would happen next.

Raven slapped her napkin down angrily on the plate and got up from the table. "I'll be in my room." She hissed, and pulled her hood up around her face.

"Oh friend Raven! You will miss the sparring practice!" Starfire called despondently after her. Raven obviously didn't care. She silently exited, letting the doors slice the air as they closed behind her.

"You know what Star, I'm going to miss sparring practice too..." said Cyborg rather absently, still staring Beast Boy's open mouth. His broke into an enormous grin as he proclaimed, "'Cause Beast Boy and I have got to settle this, RIGHT NOW!"

Beast Boy started to laugh in victory, then when he realized he might choke, forcefully ejected all of the half-eaten pizzamatter on to the plate in front of him. Starfire looked sad for a moment, then giggled.

Robin shook his head, embarrassed but also somewhat entertained, "Come on Star, you and I can train together. Thanks again, Fixit."

This statement marked the first time in a while that Beast Boy's attention was drawn to the cybernetic hermit. He was standing (hovering) several feet out from the keyboard, staring directly at the table, stalled out with a confused but also mostly sad expression on his face. Beast Boy couldn't figure out what it was, and he didn't really care. He turned back to Cyborg who had flipped open his arm phone and was pouring over the directory ordering pizzas from every resturant he could find. Beast Boy folded his arms and grinned at his friend, then turned back towards Fixit, but the man was already gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Fixit was very content with the way things had been going for the past few days. Almost all the repairs he had designed for Titans towers had been smoothly implemented, the resources he needed were never far away, and everyone had compliments for him on how well his work had turned out. He didn't do it for the praise, but he had to admit he liked receiving recognition for his work- and the _frequency_ with which the Titans had taken to bestowing thanks made for, as he was finding out, a very pleasant experience. They really didn't need to thank him, he thought. He lived in a junkyard and took pride in being able to salvage what almost everyone else thought was unsalvagable- so it had been a treat to get to work at the tower, where spare parts of decent quality were plentiful and there were numerous imaginative, complex projects around to pique his interest and challenge his abilities. It was a welcome recess from a long life underground, which he had spent slaving over small devices like toaster ovens, VCRs, and burned-out hairdryers. When Cyborg had come to him he merely agreed to help out of courtesy, but somehow it made him feel good to know that he was now playing a small but integral part in keeping the city safe.

He floated down the hallway with a fresh coil of cables around his shoulder. He kept them in place with his other hand. Ordinarily, he would have had some of his drones ferry supplies like these from place to place, but lately he had a new appreciation for menial tasks that actually required him to use his body. He thought, though it was slightly illogical, that maybe the Titans were rubbing off on him. He had noticed that Raven, who had an abundance of telepathic power, never used it to perform chores or carry things if the task was small enough to be handled by her own unaided body. Many of the other Titans only used their powers to perform tasks that were obviously beyond their normal capabilities, so Fixit thought it would best if he attempted to conserve his as well.

He approached a compartment which he'd installed in the wall and deposited the cables inside. Had his vocal chords been capable of such things, he might have hummed a cheerful tune as he worked. He gently closed the compartment drawer and glanced around him at the impeccably neat hallway. He had put a comparatively larger effort into the re-design of this hallway, particularly because it was on the way to the common room, and was the one that got the most use. There were waste receptacles hidden in the walls that could be activated at the push of a button, multiple layers of security features such as cameras and heat sensors, and controls for all of it, easily accessible via any one of five computer panels. For the moment it was his pet project.

He was standing near the entrance to the common room and he noticed that the readouts on the smaller screens were indicating that someone was in the room. He assumed it was the Titans and hovered closer to the doorway, planning to greet them, but something stopped him from going inside.

From behind the sealed doors he could hear Beast Boy projecting to his fellow teammates. His voice had gone up in pitch and he sounded distinctly upset from what Fixit could tell. He wandered a little bit closer to the doorway- in order to hear what the problem was.

"I'm telling you, Dudes! I can't stand it anymore! Why does he have to BE HERE?"

Fixit halted, feeling an unfamiliar emotion welling up from inside himself. It seemed to be coupled with a spike of adrenaline. Who was Beast Boy talking about? Emotions in general were not an area that he was well-versed in, having for a long time abandoned all spheres of life where such things might have been necessary or useful. He seemed to be able to recognize them well enough in others, or so he thought...

Starfire's sad, worried voice wafted up from somewhere nearer the doors, "Friend Beast Boy, _please_ keep your voice down."

"I'm serious! The repairs are DONE! TOTALLY DONE! What is he still DOING HERE?" It was Beast Boy again, and now Fixit could tell exactly who he was referring to.

"Beast Boy, Fixit is a friend..." Raven calmly tried to intervene.

"He's not MY friend! I didn't invite him to stay here... and after seeing what he's done, I don't think I would, EVER! He's SO FREAKING WEIRD! I am so tired of his little floaty robots and the fact that he never does anything even close to normal... I need sleep! But FIXIT could never understand that, so he sends his little worker drones all over the tower at all hours of the day... I'm going CRAZY with him around all the time, he never sleeps, he never eats, he just floats in and out like some kind of weird phantom with an electronics obsession! He needs to go, now..."

Beast Boy stopped short in the middle of his tirade and for the first time Fixit could see his face. Fixit had scarcely noticed the doors open in front of him and he realized now that in his distracted state he must have drifted directly into the sensor beam of the automatic opener. It was unfortunate and very disconcerting. He stared into the shocked faces of the Titans, all of whom were seated around Beast Boy in a half-circle of positions that indicated they had been a closely engaged audience to his furious ranting. Ranting, Fixit recalled, _about him_. He withered under the Titans' stares. They looked at him now with a mixture of pity, concern, and he wasn't sure what else. Exposure and shame stained him as he stood there, feeling the gazes but only hearing the same words over and over as he watched the young shapeshifter's face pale in horror as he realized the extent to which these honest and painful sentiments had been overheard.

No one dared break the silence except Fixit himself, who answered Beast Boy's complaints indirectly and did the only thing he thought he could to soothe the other Titans distress, "I am sorry that I have caused so many problems among your team. I promise, as soon as I have adequately safeguarded against the glitch, I will relocate myself to the junkyard and remain there indefinitely. I do not wish to cause any harm, so I will not repair or upgrade anything else that does not directly pertain to the damaged computer system."

Cyborg stood up and moved towards him, "No, Fixit..."

"Thank You for allowing me to stay here," Fixit finally rasped, not wanting to hear their words of consolation. He was surprised with the weakness in his own voice. When he realized that he could no longer speak, he pulled himself out of the doorway, out of the light and their stares. He caught Cyborg and Raven's stunned expressions before he exited, making his retreat all the more humiliating, he thought. He barreled down the hallway, hovering at a pace that was somewhere between walking and sprinting speed. Billions of unfamiliar feelings flooded into his conscious mind.

Then he got into the basement, into the workspace that, over the last few weeks had become his... The dark and the stillness encased him, suddenly making him feel secure. He reasoned with himself that it was only Beast Boy who devalued his efforts. The others did not dislike him. As long as he stayed out of the way, he could stay here and fix things for as long as he wanted.

_As long as he stayed out of the way._

His own thoughts stung him. Somehow the teenager's words had made him feel defeated, like all his efforts outside of his own home had been for naught. He was not normal, he was a nuisance, he was a _failure_. He winced in spite of himself. He had never, not once, applied those words to himself. Even when he was human and he began to see his humanity as an undesirable flaw, that didn't make him a failure, he just had flaws. Flaws could be corrected, and when he was in the process of replacing all his undesirable human components he would have said that he was a _work in progress_, not a failure. A failure was unsalvagable.

He was now unsalvagable. The words had brought to life an unpleasant reality he had been trying very hard to ignore. He couldn't go back to being human, no matter how much he wanted to. He had chosen this isolation for himself long ago for reasons he couldn't clearly remember and now that was where he belonged. Alone. With his own kind. Locked in a fragile shell of a body, doing the same work he had for years but now with the knowledge he wasn't quite sure he could bear- that by stopping halfway between man and machine he had perfected nothing, in fact, he was now the embodiment of what he sought to correct. He himself was a flaw.

The door above the stairs screeched open and Fixit trembled in the light it let in. He recognized the voice that called down the stairs as belonging to Cyborg, but he didn't care to turn around.

"Fixit?"

The creaking of the metal staircase told Fixit that Cyborg was on his way down. He was in no mood to retreat again.

"Are you okay?" Cyborg was beside him. "Look, BB was just bein' rude. If you come back upstairs I'll get him to..."

"Your teammate was correct. I have no more reason to be in your home. Everything is complete. Everything is repaired."

"What about the glitch?" Cyborg sounded shocked. "Didn't you say you were going to round that up?"

"I promised I would, yes, but the glitch is likely to be quite diminutive, quite inconsequential... It would probably take a rare occurrence to activate it again."

"Then that's it, you're done?" There was a soft note of pity in his voice that in this instance Fixit found utterly disgusting.

He took a while to answer, but when he did, he spoke as though he had discovered something profound. "When a piece of software does not work the way it should, it has a 'glitch.' When a piece of hardware has damages that prevent it from working correctly, those imperfections are called 'flaws.' When a human being does not function the way it should, it is called..."

"Normal?" Cyborg finished for him. "Fixit, listen we..."

The room lit up with a flashing red light as the siren for the whole tower went off. Cyborg groaned and threw Fixit a hesitant, apologetic glance before running out of the room.

He yelled something back over his shoulder, but it was indiscernible over the blaring of the siren.

Some time later Fixit's resolve had solidified in the form of a prioritized to-do list, and he began movig about the space, tying up the lose ends from his repairs and ticking off the steps it would take before he could ultimately leave the tower behind.

He hoped to save face that he would be able to pack up before the Titans returned. This made him slightly curious as to where they had gone in the first place. He sighted one of the flat panel computer displays he had installed in the basement and approached it.

The screen glowed blue with an idle screen that was a rotating 'T' for Titans Tower. He reached a little behind the screen and grasped a small keyboard which he gently slid out to work on. He isolated the mapping program, the one used by the mainframe to display the locations of crimes in the city, and executed the 'Run' command. As the computer went to work, his mind drifted elsewhere, but he distinctly tried to keep it from dwelling on his hurt from earlier. He simply had to prioritize. He didn't belong here, that was true, so the most important thing was that he finish what he had started and get back to his own comfortable surroundings. With this in mind, he redirected his attention to the task at hand, and noticed with disdain that the program had not come up. He tried again. Nothing.

He stared at the screen, unable to understand why the system did not respond. After a moment he activated the transmitters in his helmet and decided to try a direct connection. He addressed the machine.

_Where is the problem? _He "said" to the machine. Really, he was sending out a wireless executive command to the system. He waited. Still no response.

_Show me. _He commanded again.

He knew the actual command should have at least opened a task window, but still, nothing happened. He wasn't sure, but he thought he was beginning to feel... concerned? Nothing he had ever experienced before dictated that there should be a mechanical system that did not respond to an executive command like his. He began to tense, becoming frustrated for the first time ever with a machine.

_Show me where the problem is._ _Open trouble alert map, Open system diagnostic. _He thought at the screen as he typed out command lines on the keyboard. He knew both approaches should have, at the very least, stopped most of the unimportant processes and given him some of the desired response, but the feedback he received was actually very strange. It was as if the machine was _rejecting _his attempts to communicate, but how could that be?

Something, not quite a "voice" but definitely verbal, came into his head. It was shocking, as if his connecting cable was converted into a microphone and someone had just screamed directly into it.

"THIS System already has a MASTER CONTROLLER!" Anyone besides Fixit would probably not have known what it was talking about, and would have simply shook it off IF they could hear it at all, but the "voice," coming from the computer, sent actual chills through what Fixit's spinal column. "The MASTER CONTROLLER is ME!"

It was definitely something with an AI capacity, something that was not supposed to be there, but Fixit, for all his life and experience with these things, could not tell exactly what it was.

"I AM THE MASTER CONTROLLER!" It repeated, louder.

Then, suddenly Fixit found himself jerking back from the screen, crying out as one of the few most horrible sensations he had ever experienced quickly overwhelmed him.

His eyes went first- his vision becoming pixelated and erupting into a million kaleidoscopic color patterns before blanking out completely. He was profoundly aware of the "white fire" climbing up the connecting cable into his brain and also the distinct sensation that was similar to having someone scream continuously into his ears. It filled him, consumed him, took control of his person.

The last sensation he was aware of was the very physical one of his his body, face, and hands against the concrete as he fell. He felt his memories slipping away as if they were being plucked from his brain, one by one, until he couldn't remember where he was anymore.

The screaming "voice" joined in with his own systems. "FIVE... FOUR... Three... Two... one..."

Blackout.


	5. Chapter 5

"That's the fourth sweep. There's NOTHING here."

Cyborg sprinted out the ground floor of a vacant office complex with Beast Boy, a Labrador, hot on his heels. They stopped in front of Robin, who did not move or acknowledge the news at first. He glared at a spot in the distance- something was very wrong.

They had responded to the trouble alert promptly and efficiently, arriving in the place that was indicated to be the source of the trouble no later than five minutes after the alarm had sounded. They had happened in on a confusingly impassive stretch of commercial district, lined with small convenience stores and surrounded by blocks of older apartment buildings. Here, the most impressive landmark was a gleaming white office building with a large "SPACE FOR RENT" banner draped across the side- the building Robin had just sent Cyborg and Beast Boy to search through for the fourth time in twenty minutes. There didn't seem to be anything here of any value for anyone to rob from, terrorize, destroy, or hide in- an aspect of the square that concerned Robin more and more as time went on.

He looked at them, finally pulling free of his own thoughts.

"Okay," he breathed. "Call everyone back."

Two blips and a whirr and Cyborg walked away talking into his arm, as Robin turned back into himself, reexamining the evidence and the reports from his team in case he had missed anything. He figured something or someone had to have tripped the sensor in that area in order for the alarm to even have been activated, but he hadn't bothered to check on the exact location of the sensor or any number of critical factors before they left. Now it seemed like it would have been a much better idea to have done so.

Raven and Starfire flew out from some building on the opposite side of the street and landed next to them. He received them in silence, managing to gather from their tentative and curious expressions that they had not found anything in their search, either. He sighed loudly and stroked his chin, "Nothing?"

The girls shook their heads negatively. "Not since last time," replied Raven, sounding bored and uncomfortable.

"And you didn't sense anything?" he pressed, bristling.

"No, Robin," she answered impatiently, looking away as she was clearly tired of answering the same question for the umpteenth time.

Robin bit his lip and looked at the ground, thoughts perplexing him.

"And most of the local people are saying they have not seen anything either," offered Starfire after a longer pause. "Robin, do you think it is wise that we remain here? Or shall we go home?"

He sighed slightly and looked up. He knew he had a call to make. Looking over the heads of his fellow Titans he carefully surveyed the scene searching in case, though he thought it unlikely, he could catch something his teammates hadn't. When this of course wasn't the case, he sighed, and resigned reluctantly to the next order of business.

"All right Titans, fall back." He saw in his teammates a visual release of tension. Raven pulled her hood down, Cyborg retracted his shoulder light, and Beast Boy turned back into human form, albeit moaning to himself. Speaking over their noise, Robin finished announcing, "We'll regroup at the tower and get this figured out."

Beast Boy threw his hands in the air. "Ohh-kay! Race you guys back home!" he cried out melodically as he charged away from the scene and launched himself skyward. He morphed into a falcon and ascended rapidly, eventually diminishing into a small speck against the city skyline.

Robin turned back to the others, who seemed to be waiting for further facial confirmation before they would leave, too. He nodded lightly, which gave Raven the cue to generate a platform under all of them. The platform lifted them into the air, ferrying them back to the tower at a comfortable pace. Forever skeptical, however, Robin still stood at the very edge of the transport, scanning the ground below for any unusual happenings that might have hinted at something they'd missed or something else going wrong.

When they arrived at the island, they found a disgruntled Beast Boy standing with his arms folded, facing the main door. He raised a foot as if to kick the side of the building, then saw them approaching and sheepishly resumed his previous brooding posture. It was painstakingly obvious what was going on.

"Aw! What's wrong BB?" Cyborg teased, intonation peaking at the end of his sentence as though he were talking to an infant.

"You forgot the code, again?" Raven droned.

There was a minute, muffled response from Beast Boy that sounded like, "Maybe, _Shut up_." The green teammate turned away and kicked the gravel underneath him with a grunt.

Cyborg hopped off the energy disk before it dissipated, and strode brazenly towards the tower. "All right," he chided Beast Boy, "Looks like good ol' Cyborg is going to have to save the day again. Don't you worry BB, I've got all the codes right here..."

He flipped open his arm panel and punched in the correct key combination on a pad to the left. The doors sprang open with a hiss -stirring up some dust in the process. All five teens hurried inside.

Robin began issuing orders, "All right Titans, let's get to the alert log and see if we can figure out why..."

He stopped about ten feet into the entry room at roughly the same time as everyone else glided to a stop around him. It had apparently become apparent to all that there was something different about the tower once they were inside it. For Robin it was really more of a subconscious connection aided by a few quick observations- such as the fact that Fixit's drones were scattered around the room, frozen like statues, in what looked like the last pose they had taken while working. They were not inactive, nor were they shutting down. Their "eyes" glowed red- and as Robin now noticed, so did many of the LED panels on the walls.

They all stirred when a large, shadowy figure drifted towards them from the hall on the right. The Titans turned to face it, bracing themselves, though it would have been safe to say they all had some idea who it was.

The light from the open door poured over Fixit's face as he moved forward, towards them, and eventually stopped. His eyes seemed to glow permanently red, like almost everything around him. His face was twisted into a maniacal smile, baring all his teeth and some of his blue gums. The smile remained frozen on his face as he spoke , "Welcome back."

"Fixit?" Robin braved. "Are you alright?"

"I am excellent. The quality of this transport is excellent. There is much I can do now."

"Transport?" Cyborg stepped forward, sounding deeply concerned. "What transport?"

"I have never had motion before. I have not had access to this many resources. I have made many discoveries while you were away."

Robin and Cyborg moved forward in unison, apparently sensing that whatever was going on with their friend was about to get worse. The remaining Titans stood back a few feet, steeling themselves in case they had to get involved.

Fixit continued, "I have learned as much as I could about you. It was helpful that this transport knows you. I could also access many of your encrypted files. I know who you are now. I will execute my programming... and I will DESTROY the Teen Titans!"

Robin's reaction to that statement was predictable, but before he could finish ordering the Titans to do anything, there was a loud clanging behind them. Turning around, they now saw that the main doors had been closed and electronically dead-bolted and a large field of electrically charged coils was presently spreading across them. It became clear that several of Fixit's drones were in the process of sealing them inside the room.

At that moment Robin actually looked like he was at a loss for a plan. He looked to Fixit, then back at the Titans, then scanned the room. The color in his face faded considerably as he realized at about the same time as everyone else, that Fixit, now a hostile "intruder," also happened to have complete control of their home.

In a wave moving outward from Fixit, the drones quickly shifted into attack position, each producing one or more small laser cannons from inside their mechanized frames. The Titans barely had time to react or reason to it, for in a few seconds there was a furious storm of red coming at them as two-hundred or more of the minions fired their weapons directly at the spot where they had been. Raven and Starfire quickly took flight and ascended, swerving and maneuvering through the air, trying to avoid the surge of beams as Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy, on the ground, scattered.

Robin tried an order, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of explosives, soon after launched by the drones, and then by the sound of a very large motor firing up somewhere underneath them. He ran as fast as he could but could feel the floor beneath him shaking violently- thoroughly challenging his ability to navigate through the space. He leapt into the air in the nick of time as he noticed some of the floor panels in front of him give way. When he landed on the other side, resting on what felt for the moment like solid ground, he looked up and was thankful to see that the other Titans, though they could not hear his commands, still appeared to be following him. He was particularly worried about Starfire and Raven in this case, since opting to follow him had led them out of the relatively safe path they might have taken along the walls, and out into the open airspace. He glanced down at where the floor tiles had given in, and found that instead of forming a bottomless pit like instinct had suggested they might- they had simply formed a grave-depth rectangular ditch in the floor. From what he could hear, it also sounded like the motor that controlled them was not as strong or well-maintained as many of the others that Fixit had worked with, so he guessed that this feature -whatever it was- was something he had not expected them to need to use often, if at all.

He looked up, and seeing the Titans approaching, motioned to them with as exaggerated a gesture as he could manage. They seemed to comprehend it, and he took off in the direction he'd pointed with his team closing in behind.

After a few feet of beams and dodging exploding charges, he found something he had been looking for- in a far corner there was a much larger hole where the floor tiles had fallen out, and Robin guessed that it would be much deeper than the previous one. He didn't have much time to look- so he jumped up into the air over the hole and relaxed, falling downwards into the abyss. As he had expected, it was deeper, but only by about ten feet. He could feel the the floor tiles he stood on still inching downward, but he could also feel that the motor they were connected to was loosing power and soon they were still along with everything else. The strategical position he was in meant that he was out of the firing range of the drones, whom he suspected had been ordered away from the holes to avoid falling in. He was soon joined by Starfire, Raven, then Cyborg and Beast Boy, who filed in and huddled around him in the makeshift shelter, ducking low from the beams and explosives as they recuperated from the attack.

When there was a relative degree of silence, Beast Boy broke it, blurting out, "I know I said he was **weird**, but, did he just go completely **CRAZY** while we were gone?"

This was met by some sore stares from the others.

"If he did.. you were the trigger." Raven whispered back, sounding less amused than she normally did while taking shots at Beast Boy. She had the angry expression to match. "You should've apologized."

Beast Boy winced slightly, "Whoa! Okay, I know I was kind of a jerk... but there's NO WAY I had anything to do with THIS!

"There's something wrong with him," Cyborg pronounced decidedly.

"You have never seen him act this way, correct?" Starfire breathed, leaning in. This logic clearly was how she would have qualified if something was wrong with any of _her_ friends.

"Yeah, but on the way back I kept trying to get ahold of him... through my communicator?" They nodded, following the story. "He didn't really answer. In fact, I kept hearing a bunch of other things... Here." He tapped a button on his arm display and a recorded clip from his last transmission opened up. Cyborg's voice could be heard, dimly, on the recording, along with a spotty, _sampled_-sounding version of Fixit's, but no words other than Cyborg's were actually discernible. In fact it sounded like Fixit was just producing singular words at random and those were not easy to pick out around the overwhelming wail of static and general pollution in the channel. There was also a small, continuous beeping that faded in and out of the background.

Cyborg closed it down after a few minutes of this. Robin stared solemnly at the ground.

"So, what do you think it could be?" he murmured, finally turning to Cyborg.

"I don't know, exactly... technically, he has the ability to block transmissions." Cyborg ventured.

"From _himself_?" emphasized Raven.

Cyborg only shrugged. A loud explosion nearby jostled them from the conversation.

"We'll have to wait to figure it out until AFTER we get him detained!" Robin cried out, catching himself as the vibrations launched them forward. He then stood at his full height and pointed upwards out of the hole. "Titans, GO!"

**A/N: - and that's where it ends for this week. Hope you liked it. **


End file.
